Getting to know YOU!

Many online courses will ask you to introduce yourself during the first week. Doing so is the best way to connect with your professors and your peers. But in order to get the most out of it, you need to write a good introduction. The following steps can help you to create a strong introduction:

1. Include all the information your professor has asked for.
2. Include your skills and areas of expertise. This will give you a leg up if you are asked to form a group as others will want people with certain skills in their group.
3. Mention any accomplishments or interests that are relevant to the course.
4. Cut anything you don’t need: keep it to a single short paragraph of no more than 120 words.
5. Make sure to edit your introduction. Check not just for spelling and grammar, but for tone as well. Reading it out loud can help.

You also have the option to add information to your profile. Here you can add additional details about your interests and hobbies, as well as include alternate contact information such as additional e-mails, social media IDs, and websites. Be sure to only includes contact methods than you are comfortable sharing with a large group of people.

Making a Good Impression

Read the four introductions below and think about which person you would prefer to work with. The professor has asked students in her psychology course to say which program they are in and what they hope to get out of the course. Read them and think about which student you would like to work with on a project or in a study group:

Click on the examples to view them one at a time.

• Example #1
  hey i’m james
• Example #2
  Hi all, my name is Sunny, I took psych because I wanna learn how to mess with peoples brains lol I don’t wanna be a psychologist but I went for it anyway. I took some psych in high school so I think I’ll do pretty well.
• Example #3
  Hi everyone, it’s great to meet you all. My name is Antoine and I’m in my second year of the police foundations program. I believe that understand how people think will make me a more effective police officer, so I decided to take this course to improve my skills. I’m especially interested in social psychology so that I can understand the effects of group dynamics on people’s actions. I’ve taken a course specifically on social psychology before, so if anyone needs help with it, let me know. I’m not so strong on the learning and memory parts, so if you have a background in that I’d love to connect with you to create a study group.
• Example #4
  Hi I’m Jeanette and I just moved to town a couple weeks ago. So excited to start up school and so excited to meet all of you! I can’t wait to get going with this course, I just moved into a place on King street and it’s so nice, my roomies Katie and Sayumi are in this class too and I’m super excited to be in here with them. Why did I want to take psychology? Well, I’ve always wanted to get into working with kids, but I know how crazy tough the job market is right now for teachers so I decided to start off with a shorter program like the ECE one here at the college. So, everyone says psychology is really useful for teaching kids and I figured this would be the best way to get that early, get a jumpstart on all the psychology of teaching and learning stuff that’s coming in my program later.I really hope we do a lot of stuff on that, since it’s the whole reason I’m here! Is anyone else here in the program? What do you htink of Professor Kershaw? He seems like a real jerk right now! Don’t know how it’s going to be to have him for a whole year. Anyways I can’t wait to learn everything I can about the little tykes soon, it’s been my dream since I was a kid to work with them. Now that my older sister has two kids of her own, who are the light of my life by the way, I know I’m destined to work with kids. Look forward to working with all of you!

Once you have reviewed the examples try writing your own!